[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On June 4, 2022, a small piece of equipment (called a lightning arrestor) at a power plant in Odessa, Texas failed, causing part of the plant to trip offline. It was a fairly typical fault that happens from time to time on the grid. There’s a lot of equipment involved in producing and delivering electricity over vast distances, and every once in a while, things break. Breakers isolate the problem, and we have reserves that can pick up the slack. But this fault was a little bit different. Within seconds of that one little sho ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In January of 2024, right on the heels of a serious drought across the state, a major storm slammed into the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai. Severe winds caused damage to buildings, and heavy rain flooded roadways. At the Waiau Steam Turbine plant, the rain reached some of the generator unit controls, tripping two units and knocking 100 megawatts of power off the tiny grid (roughly 10% of demand). The overcast weather also meant solar panels weren’t producing much electricity, and the colossal battery systems at Kapolei ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Union Pacific Railroad’s Austin Subdivision in central Texas. It’s a busy corridor that moves both freight and passengers north and south between Austin and San Antonio… But it’s mostly freight. Trains run twenty-four-seven here, carrying goods like rock from nearby quarries, cement, vehicles, intermodal freight, and more. So, when Crystal Clear Special Utility District was planning a new water transmission main that would connect a booster pumping station to a new water tower to meet the growing demand along I-3 ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] 2024 marks thirty years since the opening of the channel tunnel, or chunnel, or as they say in Calais, Le tunnel sous la Manche. This underground/undersea railroad tunnel connects England with France, crossing the narrowest, but still not that narrow, section of the English Channel. The tunnel allows passengers (and, in many cases, their cars, too) to cross the channel in just over half an hour at speeds as high as 99 mph! While there are longer tunnels out there, this is the longest underwater tunnel in the world. When it w ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you’ve ever ridden a bike, driven a car, or operated pretty much any other vehicle on earth, there’s a fact you’ve probably taken for granted: you can see farther than it takes to stop. Within the span between seeing a stationary hazard and colliding with it, you have enough time to recognize it, apply the brakes, and come to a stop to avoid a collision. Your sight distance is greater than your stopping distance; it sounds almost silly, but this is a critical requirement for nearly all human-operated machines. But it’s no ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the most common attributes folks imagine when they think of trains is the clickety-clack sound they make as they roll down the tracks. The thing is, most trains don’t make that sound anymore. Or really, I should say, most rails don’t make that sound anymore. Trains are still pretty clickety-clacky, but they’re far less so than they used to be. And here’s why: those rhythmic clicks and clacks came from joints in the tracks. Those joints were a solution to a transportation problem: you can only roll out a length of rail ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is my friend Jade, creator of the Up and Atom channel. She makes these incredible math and physics explainers that I absolutely love, and she recently got the opportunity to visit ITER (eater) in France. You may have seen this place in the news: 35 nations working together to build an enormous, industrial-scale nuclear fusion reactor. The size of the project is mind-boggling. It’s been under construction since 2013, and… I like construction. So, when Jade and I were chatting about her tour, she said, “Why don’t you just ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Imagine the room you’re in right now was filled to the top with gravel. (I promise I’m headed somewhere with this.) I don’t know the size of the room you’re in, but if it’s anywhere near an average-sized bedroom, that’s roughly 70 tons of material. Fill every room in an average-sized apartment, and now we’re up to 400 tons. Fill up an average-sized house. That’s 900 tons. Fill up 30 of those houses, that’s roughly 25,000 tons of gravel. A city block of just pure gravel. Imagine it with me… gravel… chicken soup for the civil ..read more

This is the fifth and final episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's Made"-esque heavy construction videos. Drop a comment or send me an email to let me know what you think! Watch on YouTube above or ad-free on Nebula here ..read more

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the very first documented engineering disasters happened in 27 AD in the early days of the Roman Empire. A freed slave named Atilius built a wooden amphitheater in a town called Fidenae outside of Rome. Gladiator shows in Rome were banned at the time, so people flocked from all over to the new amphitheater to attend the games. But the wooden structure wasn’t strong enough. One historian put it this way: “[Atilius] failed to lay a solid foundation and to frame the wooden superstructure with beams of sufficient strength ..read more